Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006 | 8:40 a.m.
U.S. government scientists say preliminary studies show that the world's coral reefs, already threatened by pollutants such as agricultrual runoff, are now endangered by rising sea levels.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. Geological Survey scientists studying coral reefs in Hawaii say higher water levels will mean larger waves and faster currents, which can damage the outer or fringe reefs. Such currents stir up soil and land-based pollutants that have washed into the sea, which bleach and smother the coral over time.
The U.N.-backed Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change has predicted sea levels worldwide will rise by 18 inches by 2100 because of increasing global temperatures and the continued melting of glaciers.
Their predictions are bolstered by reports that glaciers are melting at record speeds in Greenland and also in the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which sits on the U.S.-Canadian border at the northern tip of Montana. Glacier National Park, the international venture's U.S. compo-nent, has retained only 27 of the 150 glaciers it had in 1850. Some scientists have predicted the park's glaciers will vanish by 2030 unless world leaders put the brakes on global warming.
The United States produces a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases that cause global climate change and warming. But the Bush administration has repeatedly refused to join in international treaties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier this year, a 40-year NASA veteran spoke out about efforts by the agency's public affairs department to squelch the release of scientific climate change information that NASA has amassed.
Melting glaciers, rising sea levels, dying coral reefs - the signs that global warming is a reality with which we must deal quickly are there. But the Bush administration seems either unable, or unwilling, to see them.
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